It is exciting and diverse. It is changing quickly. It relies on the weather, uses an incredible

Figure 7. Sampo Rosenlew C12 combine
*Source: A picture taken during an agricultural harvest by fermer.

Culture is the set of socially transmitted behaviors, acts, beliefs, speech, and all other products of human work and thought that characterize a particular population. Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next, not inherited automatically at birth. Instead, culture is learned and it helps to define perceptions, beliefs, practices, communication styles, relationships, and family roles. Cultures vary dramatically around the world, and such differences must be understood by a firm attempting to operate in an international market.

The concept of culture is very broad and thus some system is needed for describing a particular culture. Anthropologists, for example, consider culture in a total systems approach, and look at a culture based on its systems of education, economics, politics, religion, health, recreation, and kinship. A simpler approach to understanding a culture is by looking at ten general characteristics or dimensions. It must be emphasized, however, that this is a simple model, and it is not the only way to analyze a culture. The dimensions are the following:
Sense of self and space. Sense of self, or individualism, concerns how much an individual values personal freedom over responsibility to family or national groups. Sense of space is concerned with the physical space we use in our culture. Uzbekistans have a sense of space that requires more distance between individuals than that required in Latin America and Arab cultures. Also, the size and location of an executive’s office in the Uzbekistan conveys a great deal about the status of the executive, but it is a poor indicator of power in some Arab nations.

4. MARKETING MANAGEMENT FOR AGRIBUSINESS

4.1. Strategic market planning

Marketing can be defined as the process of anticipating the needs of targeted customers and finding ways to meet those needs profitably. There are several key ideas in this definition. Marketing is about anticipation. Good marketers are always working to anticipate what their customers’ needs will be in the future. This may mean anticipating the features farmers will be looking for in a new tractor or it might involve anticipating the type of seasonings consumers will want in a new frozen chicken entrée. Good marketing involves having the right products and services available when the customer is ready to buy them. It follows that good agribusiness marketers know a lot about their customers.

A second key idea is the notion of a target market. Clearly, “one size does not fit all” in the food and agricultural markets. Good marketers understand this and focus their efforts on the unique needs of specific target markets or market segments. They know that the small livestock farmer in Kentucky needs a very different set of products and services than does the large turf seed operation in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Good marketers understand that a high-income, dual-career couple with no children has different needs than a young, middle-income family with two children. While agribusiness firms may pursue more than one target market, their approach to any single-market segment involves a set of decisions tailored to the unique needs of the segment.
The final key idea in the definition of marketing is that of profitability. After careful study of a particular target market, the agribusiness marketer will likely generate a long list of products and services that the customer might be interested in. Such a list for the small Kentucky livestock farmer might include extended credit, a 1-800 phone number for questions, a well-trained, professional salesperson that makes on-farm calls, a staff nutritionist who is always available for consultation, a website with links to useful information sources, and so on. A large corn and soybean commercial producer farming several thousand acres in Iowa may be looking for an entirely different experience. They may only want access to superior performance in products, or want those products combined with technical and tactical professional support from their supplier. The challenge for the agribusiness marketer is deciding which of these things the customer will actually pay for. Agribusiness marketers must provide customers with a set of products and services at prices that generate an acceptable rate of return for their firm.
The evolution of marketing
Traditionally, marketing was viewed as “selling what you have” and some agribusinesses still approach marketing in this way. More effective agribusiness marketers, on the other hand, focus on “having what you can sell” anticipating customer needs. The starting point for any marketing program must be the identification of customer needs and satisfying customer needs is the primary focus for any market driven organization. However, marketing has evolved in agribusiness firms over time and most of today’s effective agribusiness marketers didn’t start with a focus on customers.
Many agribusinesses that achieved early success usually did so because they had a successful and unique product that satisfied a specific customer need. And, some agribusiness firms continue to operate with a central focus on the product. Here, the idea is to create a product that is so good customers will seek it out. This approach to marketing is known as being product driven. The old saying “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” reflects this marketing philosophy.
In a product-driven organization, product development, research, engineering, and operations are the primary focus. These firms produce a product in high demand and sales are good, so customer needs aren’t a primary concern at least in the short run. Given this, what is the problem with this marketing philosophy? Make no mistake great products and services are a fundamental part of any agribusiness firm’s success. But it is not uncommon for a product driven organization to become so focused on producing its product or service that it becomes insensitive to changes in farmer or consumer needs. The drive for internal operating efficiency may get more attention than new features customers may want. Sales may slow as competitor products that are similar are introduced to the market. Marketers in these firms then begin a search for ideas to help generate increased sales.
Product driven marketing continues to evolve due to web-based access to products and services. Historically, many agricultural customers were limited to obtaining products within a short drive of their operation. Today, web-based sales make more products more readily available to farm customers. Purchases of parts, animal health products, even seed and barge loads of fertilizers can be ordered online. Acquiring farm inputs online poses both an opportunity and a challenge for the customer. You order and receive a product, but typically, the support stops there.
When sales growth slows, many firms will adopt a new approach to marketing which centers around intensifying the sales effort. Organizations that focus primarily on communicating the benefits of their products are called sales driven. This approach may involve taking the firm’s core product to a new level, and introducing a number of variations or extensions to serve existing customers better or serve an entirely new group of customers. It may involve a search for new geographic markets where the firm has not been before. The sales-driven organization may add more sales people and ask them to work harder selling the features and benefits of the firm’s products and services. Or it may spend increasing amounts on promoting the firm’s products through a variety of advertising activities.
The idea behind the sales approach to marketing is that customers just don’t know enough about the product if the message is delivered effectively, sales growth will occur. Like good products, effective sales and market communications efforts are important to the success of any agribusiness. But, sales-driven agribusinesses fail to ask one important question do we have what the customer wants to buy? Failure to carefully consider this question leaves a sales-driven organization highly vulnerable to competitors who are more in tune with changing customer needs.
Frustrated with sales efforts that are ineffective, successful firms ultimately turn their total attention to customer needs. Truly understanding what the customer needs to run their farm or agribusiness more efficiently and profitably or how consumer food tastes and convenience demands are changing becomes central to everything they do. This focus on customer needs drives all decisions in the organization, from product development efforts, to production location decisions, to asset allocation decisions are made with a clear vision of how the firm intends to satisfy the customer in mind. Ultimately, these firms are looking to establish a deep and lasting relationship with their customer. This type of organization is called market-driven.
A market-driven agribusiness is one with a good product and a good sales effort, but also one with a clear understanding of what type of customers it is trying to serve and what these customers want and need from the firm both now, and over the lifetime of the relationship. It is a firm that takes ideas like “the customer is king” and “getting close to the customer”